In her 154th NYRR race at the New York City Marathon, Denise Iannizzotto ran her best race yet. At age 56, this New York Flyer still shows no signs of slowing down. Denise managed to set a course PR (3:17:17) in her 14th finish in New York. She ran over 5-minutes faster than her performance last year when she took home 1st place in the F55 division. To top that she set a lifetime half marathon PR during the first half of the race (1:36:40). [Official Result]

If you’re doing that at the end of the New York City Marathon you’re either walking or you’re having a PR day. Steve Orellana did just that this past weekend. The image speaks for itself. Steve was out in 1:22:14 and came home in 1:20:36 to set a new PR. His official result was 2:42:50 placing him 241st out of 52,697. [Full Results]

Thomas Streitberg of Singapore set a new PR despite rainy conditions this past Sunday at the New York City Marathon. More impressively, he ran a negative split on a course that gets much harder in the second half. His official time was 3:13:41 (1:37:09 first half, 1:36:32 second half). [Full Results]

Denise Iannizzotto of Lake Katrine, NY has run the New York City Marathon 13 times since 2005. We’re proud to report that in her 13th attempt she ran her fastest and took home the win in the F55 age group.

Denise’s official time was 3:22:45, almost three minutes ahead of her next age group competitor. [Full Results] Her win comes one year after setting a PR and finishing second in the 50-54 age group in the Chicago Marathon.

The “marathon trap” is widely understood but generally overlooked on race day for a number of reasons which we’ll explore below. The Trap, if you will, applies to any running race not managed properly but it’s deeper and more common during the marathon. The New York City Marathon is even more unique in how it magnifies the factors that lead to it.

Iris Saar of Siyo Fitness reached her goal of sub-4 hours at the New York City Marathon earlier this month. As you can see Iris hit the books on VDOT so she could truly understand the method to the madness before customizing one of Dr. Daniels’ online training plans. All her diligence and new smarts paid off with a 16-minute new PR! Her official time was 3:52:19. [Full Results]

“Reading the Bible. I’m a Jack Daniels’ girl and my coaching relies a LOT on his perception of training and exercise physiology. I have PR’d this year myself like a crazy person using the VDOT method.”

Rea Winter shares her experience at the New York City Marathon. She stuck to her plan and got a huge new PR! Improving is always fun but the biggest difference in following a custom plan versus a generic plan is how you feel during and how well you recover following the race.

First, I had a 32-minute improvement on last years New York City Marathon time (trained following a basic low mileage training plan with no variety in paces, etc). Second, I ran an even split race (thought this one was impossible!) and finished SO strong, I could hardly believe my legs as it was happening!

Finally, though I am not a very fast runner, and still new to the sport, my finishing time clocked in 4:05:35 which was about 1-minute faster than my predicted time on the training plan! I felt great during the race, as well as immediately after and the days following.

Kim Feinman of Westwood, NJ shares her New York City Marathon experience after following one of our training plans:

I didn’t cramp at all in my legs. I don’t even have blisters!! (this is a first for me, but I think I finally figured out the best sneakers for my running)

Your plan helped me believe in myself again. I was truly afraid that I wouldn’t be able to finish. I kept having to remind myself to trust my training. I was worried about having a repeat of my last marathon and laying down on that Queensboro Bridge again. I kept saying that this was my last marathon, but running it had me fall in love with it all over again. So I’m sure I’ll do it again.

Alanna Imbach runs in our SpeedPass group in NYC on Tuesday nights. She was kind enough to share her experience training with us for the New York City Marathon.

11 months after giving birth to twins (and being on bed rest before they were born…) putting on running shoes again for the *first* time one week before I joined SpeedPass, and clocking HALF the training miles/hours that I did for previous marathons, I not only finished NYC, but beat my old marathon PR by 4-minutes (pretty sure it would have been more if I hadn’t stopped for pics with the babes!)

Far better yet, I went in to the race without injury, and came out of the race without even a limp of tightness. In past marathons, I was an injury-prone mess on race day, and couldn’t walk for a week after. All to say, I’m living breathing proof that your program kicks ass 🙂

The following are the most popular fall marathons we customize training plans for and when our 18 and 15-week schedules start for this year’s race.

We recommend 18-weeks of training if you’ve been running fairly consistently but are not in great race shape when starting the plan. 15-weeks is better if you’re in good racing shape and you’ve already been doing some quality workouts. Sometimes the longer the training plan the more risk of overtraining.